Quotes from John Eldredge

I am surrendering it, turning it over to Jesus, relinquishing its every right.

But I will restore you to health and heal your wounds," declares the LORD, "because you are called an outcast, Zion for whom no one cares." (Jer. 30:16—17)

Make no room for offense.

respectable channels of religion. Consider this one piece of evidence: millions of people who have spent years attending church, and yet they don't know God. Their heads are filled with stuffing about Jesus, but they do not experience him, not as the boys did on the beach. There are millions more who love Jesus Christ but experience him only occasionally, more often stumbling along short of the life he promised, like Lazarus still wrapped in his graveclothes.

Cultivate admiration.

As Athanasius said, "He became what we are that we might become what he is."

The key to receiving answers to prayers for guidance is to let go of our constant attempt to "figure things out."

Story is how we figure things out, bring order and meaning to the events around us. The story we hold at any given time shapes our perceptions, hopes, and expectations; it gives us a place to stand.

We live in a very different moment in the story than David and his colleagues; a great deal has changed since the Psalms were penned. The incarnation, for one thing—the Son of God has come. Your ransom, for another. The cross has happened, the resurrection too. Tectonic shifts have shaken the heavens and the earth, and those events change the posture of our praying in profound ways.

The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed. (The Sacred Journey) Only when we enter our wound will we discover our true glory.

I don't trust a man who hasn't suffered; I don't let a man get close to me who hasn't faced his wound.

The old saints sang "Great Is Thy Faithfulness," both because it's true and also because they needed to declare it to be true.